What did you do one year ago today? – How Walking Home has changed me

It was exactly one year ago today, on a sunny Sunday morning, that I set out on an elaborate adventure. I had it in my head to walk from my home town Berlin to Biarritz at the French Atlantic coast. And I wanted to ask people along the way for shelter for the night. 4,800 kilometers later I arrived, in the sunny afternoon of Sunday, 7 September. The first anniversary of my departure feels like the right moment to reflect on the most important lessons I have learnt from 162 days on the road.

Finally, I had grossly underestimated the length of my journey. Though I had planned six months to complete it, I hadn’t thought I would be walking most days. By my last calculations, I covered 4,800 instead of 3,000 km.

And this is where the cookie began to crumble. During the final weeks, I was tired like I had never been before. I really wanted to give up.

… but sometimes you can’t make it on your own…

It would be ludicrous of me to pretend I did my walk in a bubble, with only myself to rely on. I didn’t. I had lovely friends and family at home, who always had a word of encouragement or two for me. I had people along the road, who supplied me with beds, food, coffee, biscuits, laughter,…

But I had such big plans of how I would report from my journey. I had come up with questions for interviewing my hosts, asked my followers, fans and readers to contribute, the Betterplace campaign set up. After all, I had seen other travelers do it. I could do at least as well.

It took me less than a week to figure out that most travelers who manage to run a social media campaign during their travels do so with the help of a team. The team might wait for them after a day’s walk, take bullet points for the latest blog post via the phone or make friends with sponsors and media. I didn’t have such a team.

So I decided to ditch the big plans and enjoy my journey instead.

…which is good: because by and large people are awesome

As I said at the beginning of this post I had planned on asking random strangers for a roof over my head for a night during my walk. And half the days this really worked. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, is how many times people went above and beyond to accommodate me:

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